by Jane Fallon
I pop my head out from behind his back. It takes a moment for her to register what she’s seeing but just as Jack is saying, ‘Oh, look who I brought …’ Mel lets out a piercing squeal.
‘Oh my God!! You’re here!!’ She grabs me into a hug, half crushing the life out of me. The familiar, safe touch of her is so comforting I want to blurt out my secrets right away, even with Jack standing there, but I remind myself that this is her night and I’m not going to spoil it. ‘How on earth?’
I hold her at arm’s length. ‘Last-minute madness. I couldn’t bear to miss it.’
‘I can’t fucking believe it.’
Someone thrusts a glass of Prosecco into my hand. I remind myself that drinking too much would not be a good idea but then I down it anyway. It’s not every day your best friend turns forty. We try and snatch bits of conversation in between the hordes of people flinging themselves at Mel to wish her a happy birthday. I don’t care. I know I’ll have her all to myself tomorrow. I wonder if I should check whether she’s going to be at home, but I don’t want to give myself away in front of Jack. Although my guess is she’ll be lying in bed moaning about her hangover for most of the day anyway.
Around ten, the party thins out a bit as our friends who have little ones start to drift off to relieve babysitters. I see Mel roll her eyes at the retreating back of one couple. Party-pooping is a bit of a sin in her book. I’m exhausted from chatting to all her friends – most of whom I haven’t seen since I left for the States. Everyone asks how the show is going and I have to smile and say, ‘Great,’ because it’s written in blood in my contract that I don’t let slip plot lines to anyone. What they’re all going to think when I suddenly move home, tail between my legs, in two weeks’ time, I have no idea. Except that, of course, I no longer seem to have a home. Shit, I realize, I need to start thinking about where I’m going to live. Maybe Mel and I could look for somewhere together. Two sad fortyish singles back to sharing rented accommodation. Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad.
‘I have about five lines an episode,’ I say, over and over again, trying to manage expectations that I’m suddenly a big star, but I know I’ll still be in for a barrage of ‘You weren’t in it much’ comments when it eventually airs over here.
‘Lucky for you there’s a free bar, or the drinks would definitely be on you,’ Shaz, Mel’s best work friend and someone I’ve always found more than a little brash and irritating, crows. She leans in too close, swaying slightly, eyes glassy from too much booze. ‘Bringing in the big bucks!’
I don’t tell her that, even though this is the most I have ever earned on an acting job, it’s still just a wage. No one is paying me extra because mine is a name they simply have to have associated with their show. The trade-off for them casting an unknown from the UK was that I had to pay all my own relocation expenses and any travel back and forth. (Thankfully, my rent was taken care of by the production company, otherwise I would have been taking home negative amounts. I get – got – to live in a smart block on the far reaches of the Upper East Side, in spitting distance of the studios across the bridge in Queens.) I’ve managed to save a bit, but it’s hardly a life-changing amount. Especially now there won’t be any more.
I take refuge at an empty table for a second, down a big glass of water. Past experience tells me too much alcohol and jet lag don’t mix so I’m trying to apply the ‘soft drink between each hard drink’ rule, which just means I have to keep running to the loo. Mel is on the dance floor – I say ‘dance floor’, it’s actually a small space in the middle of the room where a few people are half-heartedly breaking moves. Not Mel. Dancing is one thing she is never half-hearted about. She’s a blur of bright colours in a sea of blacks and browns. Not for the first time I marvel at my friend’s confidence.
I look around to see where Jack is – I’ve been monitoring his interactions with women, looking for clues – but he seems to be on his best behaviour. I catch sight of him chatting happily to one of Mel’s work colleagues – John, I think his name is – so I head back towards the bar. No such luck. Mel has me in her sights and she reaches out to grab me as I pass. I’m a horrible dancer. Awful. I’m way too aware of what I’m doing, how ridiculous we all look jigging about together, arms and legs flapping like a floor full of chickens. And as soon as I think that, I’m lost. I’m out of time with myself, let alone the music. She won’t let me go, though. One of Mel’s favourite things has always been to force me on to a dance floor and watch me suffer.
‘This is my best birthday present ever,’ she says.
‘What? Watching me make a prat of myself?’
‘You being here,’ she laughs.
‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’
‘Yes, you would. You’d have missed it if you were filming.’
‘Well, yes, there is that. But otherwise …’
She laughs again. ‘You’ve made an old woman very happy.’
The music stops abruptly. We dancers stumble to a halt. The door opens and in walk two waiters, carrying Mel’s cake, candles lit. They parade it in front of her while everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’, and her face lights up when she sees it. She squeals when she reads the writing.
‘That is brilliant.’ She throws her arms around me. ‘Have you got any idea how much I love you?’
Despite everything, I’m so happy I’m here.
Later – it must be one in the morning – I look around for Jack and can’t see him. I’m tempted to leave without him. Let him find his own way home and discover me fast asleep. I’m knackered, and the last time I saw Mel she was ranting about going on to a club. Safe in the knowledge she has enough friends who will indulge her in her desire to dance till dawn, I have every intention of sneaking out without saying goodbye. She’s so happily drunk she won’t even remember whether I was there at the death or not. I wander around the periphery of the room, scouting who’s still there. The pub staff are wanting to close up and everyone – apart from the hard core – is starting to hunt for their coats.
I find him eventually, coming out of the gents. He’s more than a little drunk, grinning wolfishly, hair standing up on one side.
‘Are you ready to go? They’re closing up, I think.’
‘Definitely,’ he slurs. ‘Are we Ubering?’
I fish my phone out. ‘Okay. I was going to try and sneak out without Mel noticing. Otherwise she’s going to try and force us to go to –’
‘You’re not leaving?’
Too late. Mel is making a beeline for us. She’s staggering on her vertiginous heels.
‘Busted. Are you sure you’re okay to go out? Do you have people to go with?’
She flings her arms around me. ‘Loads. But it won’t be the same without you.’
‘I’ll ring you tomorrow. Make sure you get home safe.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
She finally lets me go and then throws her arms round Jack, too. I find myself thinking that’s probably the last time she’ll do that. Not once she knows the truth about him. Jack pats her on the back like he’s burping a baby. He’s never been any good at hugs. Public ones, at least.
He pulls away and, as he does, as I turn around to wrestle my other arm into my coat, that’s when I see it. Their hands interlinked as they separate. Fingers moving reluctantly apart, making contact until the last minute.
And then I remember where I’ve seen that orange top before. The one that Mel’s wearing. It was in the suitcase. In my bedroom.
I lean back in to hug Mel again. Just to check. That’s it. That’s the smell I caught a hint of in my flat. Melissa’s Diptyque perfume.
7
You’d think I would cry. Fall to the floor in a heap and bawl my eyes out. My boyfriend and my best friend. Him, I can get over. Her, never. But actually my overriding emotion is anger. I’m furious. Absofuckinglutely incandescent with rage. I want to hurt them. I want to make them suffer.
Jack is too pissed to notice my mood as we wait in the street for
the car and then, the minute we’re in, he falls asleep. Head back, mouth open. At the other end, the Uber driver helps me get him out – I assume because he wants him gone from his car, not because he wants to win Driver of the Year. In fact, the second we’ve got Jack into a standing position, he lets go of his side and I’m left with the whole lolloping weight of him. I manage to half drag him up the steps – even in this mood I’m not mean enough to leave him on the street – but once we’re through the front door there is no way I’m killing myself by dragging him up to the first floor. I let go of him and he thunks to the hallway carpet. Then I head up the stairs, slamming the flat door behind me. I can only hope our downstairs neighbours are already home and won’t have to negotiate six foot one of drunk, semi-conscious bastard on their doorstep any time soon.
Once in the flat, I get ready for bed. I’m tempted to call Chris again but I know he’ll have been asleep for hours. I check my phone anyway. It’s always possible the production have been trying to get hold of me, telling me they’re changing the schedule again. Because I only appear in four scenes in my final episode, they have been able to schedule them all for the second week. I think they felt sorry for me. But it’s not out of the question that something could cause them to rearrange the shooting order. I’m not supposed to leave the country without permission but, on this occasion, I thought, Sod it. What were they going to do if they suddenly called me in for tomorrow and I had to tell them I’m halfway across the world? Fire me?
Instead, I have three missed calls from Kat. Kat is a friend, but one of those friends that, every time you see them, you pretty much wish you hadn’t made the effort. Actually, that’s too harsh. She means well. She just has a tendency to be a bit blunt. She shared a house with Mel and me in Finsbury Park when I first left uni and Mel moved up to try and hit the big time. I found Kat in a Time Out ad, along with another girl called Liz, who none of us ever really saw in the three years we lived together. Basically, we just needed numbers to make renting a whole house on next to no money feasible. We would have teamed up with anyone who wasn’t a serial killer. Although the jury is still out on Liz. Anyway, Kat and I became friends. She’s spiky, and that can come across as mean, but she can be kind with it, which is what sealed the deal for me. She and Mel were too much like argumentative cats to ever get on, although, to give her credit, Kat tried. But Mel loathed her. Referred to her as Katty. Put her down whenever she got the opportunity.
Kat found Mel’s self-belief baffling. And I know she got more than a little satisfaction from watching as Mel’s dreams failed to materialize and she finally had to admit defeat. Still, once we all went our separate ways – Kat to a job in Birmingham, Mel and I to a tiny flat in Bounds Green and Liz to God knows where, none of us ever asked – we kept in touch, she and me as friends, Mel as a reluctant occasional third wheel. I haven’t seen her in months. More than a year, I realize guiltily.
I know she will be calling because someone will have posted pictures of the party already and she’ll be demanding to know why she wasn’t invited. And, to be fair, I don’t blame her. She and Mel are ‘friends’, they’re just not very friendly. If Mel’s celebration had been an intimate dinner for eight, she wouldn’t have expected to be there. But a party for a hundred? I can’t face appeasing her now, even though the last call was only ten minutes ago so I’m pretty sure she’s still up. But then it occurs to me that, if one person might appreciate what I’m going through, it would be her. If there’s one person who would indulge me in a bit of bitching about Mel …
I listen, and there’s no sound coming from the hallway. Jack must be sound asleep on the floor. I made sure he was in a safe position before I left him (the only thing I can remember from a weekend first-aid course about twenty years ago is the recovery position, and I’m gratified that it’s finally come in handy) so I have no qualms about leaving him there. I hit Kat’s number. I know I shouldn’t, that she’s in no way impartial, but I desperately feel the need to offload on someone who’ll indulge me. She answers almost immediately. I can picture her sitting in her stylish living room, which is like a museum of the sixties and seventies, lips pursed tight, her poor husband, Greg, trying but failing to convince her that it must have been an oversight.
‘Unbelievable!’ she says, before I can get a word in. ‘I invited her to my wedding. My fucking wedding! And she had the gall to come and then not invite me to her fortieth!’
‘Your wedding was four years ago. You probably saw more of each other then.’
‘That’s what Greg says,’ she says, in a tone of voice that implies agreeing with Greg in this instance is not the correct thing to do.
‘Well, she’s probably just being a bitch.’ That takes the wind out of her sails. Never in the eighteen years I’ve known Kat have I slagged off Mel in front of her.
‘Well … are you okay?’
Here goes nothing. ‘I think Mel and Jack might be having an affair. Kat, you mustn’t tell anyone. I’m trusting you.’
‘Greg, why don’t you go to bed, love? I’m going to be a while.’
I hear him mumble his assent, probably grateful to be off the hook. ‘Night, Amy,’ he calls as he goes. I love Greg – in an entirely appropriate friend-of-his-wife kind of way – he’s the calm, unrufflable opposite that buffs away Kat’s hard edges.
‘I won’t. Shit. Where’s this come from?’
I tell her what I saw. We get sidetracked at around the point where she realizes I was at the party too.
‘You’re in England? Since when?’
‘Yesterday. Well, technically, the day before, as it’s Sunday now. It was a last-minute thing.’
She huffs but she lets it go.
‘And you’re really sure it’s her? I mean, far be it from me to want to defend her, but you couldn’t have misinterpreted? Like you said, they were both plastered.’
‘No. The perfume sealed it. I knew I recognized that smell.’
‘She could have popped round to see him, though. I mean, they’re friends …’
‘He said he hadn’t spoken to her. Why would he lie? And, anyway, the top. It was there in the case. That was her stuff.’
‘Fuck.’
‘That’s an understatement.’
‘It makes sense. You know how jealous she’s always been of you, right?’
I let out an involuntary snort. ‘Hardly.’
‘Blatantly.’
There’s a crash as – I assume – Jack stumbles up the stairs, obviously having woken from his floor bed. ‘Shit, I’d better go. Jack’s coming and I don’t want to have to deal with him now.’
He fumbles around, trying to get his key in the lock. Burps loudly. I have no intention of going to help him.
‘Okay. Listen, come to us tomorrow. You can hide out here till you go back. We’ll be in all morning. Come as early as you like.’
‘Thanks, Kat. You can tell Greg, by the way. Just no one else. Not yet.’
‘Oh, I was going to. You tell me, you tell us both, them’s the rules.’
I actually laugh as I say goodnight. Then I put out the light and pull the covers over my head just as Jack manages to get the door open. He falls over the coffee table, swearing loudly. I leave him to it.
When I wake up in the morning, he’s found his way to bed. A quick check under the covers reveals he still has all his clothes on, including his shoes. It’s already nearly eleven so, by the time I’ve had a shower, dressed and eaten something, it’s time to go: my fictional flight is just after four. I pack my case quietly. I don’t want to disturb him if I can help it. He doesn’t deserve a fair hearing. He doesn’t deserve for us to sort this out like adults. He’s forfeited that right. At five to twelve I write him a note: ‘Didn’t want to wake you, you looked so peaceful :) Waited as long as I could but I didn’t want to risk missing the plane! Talk later xxx,’ and leave it by the kettle.
On the way to the Tube my phone pings with a message. Mel. ‘Jesus, head like a sick buffalo! Why did you
let me drink that much!! How fun was that, though?? Wanted to wish you bon voyage, now back to bed (on my own, before you ask!!!!) with an Alka Seltzer! Love you xxx’
I resist the urge to tell her to go fuck herself. Send her a non-committal smiley face instead.
8
Kat and Greg live in a brutalist ex-council block near Russell Square in a beautiful two-bedroom flat with a tiny north-facing balcony. It cost them a small fortune, but it perfectly suits their retro aesthetic.
She’s standing in the open doorway when I get out of the lift. Black, fringed bob shining, thick-framed glasses, a slash of red lipstick. She greets me with a quick hug.
‘Jesus, you look terrible,’ she says as we pull apart, and I manage a weak smile. It’s such a Kat comment. In fact, I remember much of Mel’s problem with her stemmed from the time she came into our shared kitchen dressed for a party and asked her usual question, ‘How do I look?’
We all do it. Mel more than most. And we all just expect platitudes in response, not a full critique. Kat, it turned out, had never understood why someone would ask if they just wanted a compliment regardless.
‘That length’s not great on you. It cuts you off at the knees and makes your legs look short. Which they definitely aren’t.’
I’d laughed, but Mel had looked as if she was going to explode.
‘Thanks for your advice, Mrs Super-stylish. Remind me to take you with me next time I’m clothes shopping.’
Kat had shrugged. ‘You asked. I was just trying to say you have great legs so why not show them off to their best advantage?’
Mel had huffed out of the room, but when she stuck her head around my door ten minutes later to say goodbye I noticed she was wearing something different.
‘Thanks,’ I say now.
‘Greg’s cooking lunch.’ Now she mentions it, I notice there’s a nutty, garlicky aroma wafting from the kitchen that, on any other day, would have me salivating.